IN THE WAKE OF THE NEWS.

Tattooed Tyson Displays New Image, Literately Speaking

LAS VEGAS — So impressed with the literary majesty of Mao Tze Tung and Arthur Ashe is Mike Tyson that he has their faces tattooed on his arms--Mao on the right and Ashe on the left.

This, I suppose, is an honor, though from what I remember of Ashe, he might have preferred a postcard instead.

I did not know Mao but I do recall his face usually had a much bigger surface than even Tyson's considerable bicep.

Because Tyson's arms are his weapons, this is like a gunfighter carving a cameo into the handles of his guns or a lumberjack engraving his ax.

No greater love has a workman for his tools than to give them faces. Judge Roy Bean named a whole town after Lily Langtry after only seeing her picture.

Except this has to do with the opening of Tyson's mind, heretofore assumed to be an archeological dig.

In any case, next to the multi-illustrated Cher, there is probably no more famous a body of art, and certainly none more notable at a sports event since Roseanne flashed her memorial to new husband Tom Arnold at a World Series. Tyson would take both Mao and Ashe into the ring with him as he destroyed Peter McNeeley on Saturday night.

One does not question the devotion of someone so newly literate as Tyson claims to be. When he was in jail, all he did, he said, was "read, read, read," not as impressive as if he had "wrote, wrote, wrote"--or passed his GED test--but worth applause nonetheless.

Yet coming out of jail so self-decorated is like coming home from vacation with Wisconsin Dells bumper stickers on your camper. You may not want to call attention to where you've been.

And this is not evidence of reform as much as souvenir collecting. Well, at least he didn't ask us over for slides.

The library is full of many, many impressive writers, and as Tyson expands himself from thug to Renaissance man, he may find his first loves fading.

I know I don't think as much of Norman Mailer as I once did, though the closest I came to actual indelibility was when a paperback copy of "Advertisements For Myself" faded through the hip pocket of my chinos.

We could see Ferlinghetti on the Tyson forearm and Balzac on the Tyson back. Why, the Bronte family alone would need the entire Tyson chest. When next he strips for a weigh-in, we might be able to watch Dostoevsky change to Dickens just by asking Tyson to cough.

Is Tyson a new and better human being? He says he is. His tattoos say he is. He did not, after all, engrave his forehead with a swastika, as has Charles Manson, another famous illustrated convict.

"I'm not going to split the Red Sea," Tyson said. "I'm just more conscious about my involvement in life."

This would include his new religion of Islam, even if he has yet to visit any of the mosques in this, his new hometown. What seems most obvious about the new Tyson is a wariness, a reserve, a suspicion.

In an exchange with a writer during the week, Tyson let a bit of light into his world. Tyson was asked why he had said he thought his friends would betray him, the same friends who, nevertheless, are still around him.

"I said it because I meant it," Tyson said. "Other reasons are none of your business.

"They have people they call assassins, guys who shoot people, kill people. But there's other kinds of assassins, guys that lurk behind school buses and wait for you to fall in the snow.

"And these people kill your character. That's what you are, a character killer. And that's the best thing that ever happened to you, that I spoke to you, my friend."